A paper attempting to present what National Library of India and suggest what it should be.National Library of India should fulfill the basic function of the acquisition and preservation of documents published in India. National Library should also have bibliographic control over the documents published in India as well as documents on India published elsewhere. The services of national library also should be organized in such a manner that it becomes useful and easily approachable to all the citizens of the country. But none of the discussions initiated by government or the recommendations of the expert committees on the library have given due consideration to this basic objectives. The study observes that national library of India remains as a big library with huge buildings, unorganized and irrelevant collections developed without any planning and a large stock of staff with services limited to the to people belonging to the city of Calcutta. It has totally failed in achieving the basic objectives. The study points out the urgent need to reorganize the system to achieve the objectives of a national library.